"The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret." — T. Pratchett

Our local hospital :-|

Whatever my problem is, it’s not l*ziness, as has been demonstrated again recently. I feel a little better, so I not only overdo things physically but start into two series of posts here. 😉 Having to take it easier is why I haven’t turned out more installments in either yet. Plus, I’ve been a little tired of having to think about the vitamin D-related stuff, and needed a little break from reading and writing about it. (And I’m not doing so well sitting up in here at the keyboard ATM, after getting a cracked bone in my pelvis the other night…hmm, may be a good excuse for that netbook I’ve been wanting for a while now.) With any luck, more posts will happen soon.

As mentioned in the last post, our local hospital has a really bad A&E/ER department. In 2009:

Barking, Havering and Redbridge Hospitals NHS Trust’s Accident & Emergency departments were ranked 150/151 in the country on pain relief, 151/151 for health care standards, 151/151 on general patient satisfaction.

AFAICT, our local one and King George in Ilford are both big problems. I’ve been in the local one’s A&E twice–with a horrible migraine and the autokneecapping incident from the last post–and all I can say is that at least they were not overtly rude on the migraine trip, and gave me some (inadequate) pain relief. (A small dose of OTC-strength Co-codamol, when I told them I’d already taken the equivalent and it didn’t help.) The physical plant is only a few years old now, and it already looks grotty and run-down. It honestly looked as bad as what I saw of the previous Victorian premises. I didn’t want to touch any surfaces I didn’t have to, which kinda added to the anxiety.

OTOH, to be fair, my four trips to the Urgent Care there have been OK other than not wanting to touch anything in the waiting rooms. Two for bronchitis/asthma flares, one when my back was locked in spasm, and another for a nasty allergic reaction. They didn’t give me anything other than an NSAID and advice not to lift and carry heavy stuff for the back, though; bit of a pattern there.

Mrs Ali’s husband Usman Javed, 29, said his wife was in “unbearable pain” after being induced at 40 weeks, but his pleas for help were ignored by midwives. Mrs Ali had suffered a ruptured womb and died five days later.
The Care Quality Commission this month found that the unit was often understaffed and employees were carrying out tasks for which they did not feel appropriately skilled. Inspectors also found that the hospital was failing to follow guidelines on safe care, such as timescales for transferring women from the antenatal ward to the labour ward. The commission, which has been monitoring the hospital since the warning, says these improvements need to be made by Wednesday.
It is feared the problems at Queen’s will get worse if the maternity and A&E departments at King George Hospital in Ilford go ahead as planned.
Steven Kelly, cabinet member for social services and health at Havering council, said: “If things continue as they are you could not close King George and take the extra load to Queen’s.”

Yes, they have been wanting to do this with budget cuts, as overcrowded as Queens Hospital already is. And send people to what AFAICT are the worst units there. (Not that they seem to be much better at King George…)

CONDEMNED emergency and maternity wards serving the borough could be granted a reprieve.

The wards at King George Hospital, Ilford, are set to close after health bosses decided to send patients elsewhere, but campaigners claim the consultation on the plans was flawed and that most GPs were against the decision…

Health for North East London wants to send patients to A&E and maternity wards at Whipps Cross Hospital in Leytonstone and Queen’s in Romford, where it plans to expand maternity services, instead of King George.

Barking, Havering and Redbridge Hospitals Trust (BHRT) is one of 21 bodies that have been identified by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) as not meeting expectations in dealing with infections including C.diff and MRSA.

The trust itself has admitted that it did not meet the appropriatate standards for healthcare associated infections (HCAI).

Rates had apparently fallen by that point, but 2004-2006 Barking, Havering and Redbridge Hospitals had some severe problems with C. difficile infections in particular (figures only reported for patients 65 and over). Summarized from another source:

Meanwhile, the Times Public Agenda reports that figures released by the Health Protection Agency have revealed that more than 13,000 London patients have been infected by the Clostridium difficile superbug in the past two years. Barking, Havering and Redbridge Hospitals Trust has the worst infection record.

And they were still getting caught violating and ignoring safety procedures in 2009.

A hospital has been found guilty of failings in the care of a woman who died after contracting superbugs while in intensive care.

Doreen Levey’s condition quickly deteriorated after she was admitted with a cough and diarrhoea to Queen’s Hospital in Romford. She was later diagnosed with MRSA and Clostridium difficile and died shortly after.

The hospital, which has been locked in a dispute with the family of the 68-year-old for four years, has now been reprimanded for failing to address serious complaints they raised. The verdict comes just days after the Essex hospital was accused of poor standards of care over the deaths of two other patients. Lili Backhouse, who was 23 months old, from Rainham, died after doctors allegedly failed to spot that she had meningitis…

“Superficially it may have looked impressive, but underneath the shiny new exterior lay a poorly managed organisation with some staff that were not only incompetent but were incapable of following basic hygiene codes, standard operating procedures and Control of Substances Hazardous to Health regulations.”

Ms Levey, 44, a biomedical scientist from Swanley in Kent who has worked for the National Health Service for 22 years, added: “The undignified, uncaring treatment that I witnessed has left a feeling of distrust, disgust and horror.”

She said her concerns over the state of the hospital heightened when she saw what she believed to be various hygiene lapses and disciplinary offences when she returned to discuss her mother’s case.

Then, when she visited her father at Queen’s in December, she claims she saw someone else’s bloodstains on the walls around him.

I honestly have no trouble believing that, just from what I have seen. Including the “undignified, uncaring treatment”.

Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust has hired 43 nurses from Portugal and Ireland to staff A&E and medical assessment wards at King George Hospital, Ilford, and Queen’s Hospital, Romford.

It looks like they need more than that for two large, seriously understaffed hospitals.

Now, I know this is a large urban teaching hospital (more like inner suburbs, actually, but…). I have been in two different similar type hospitals before as a patient. The patient care and atmosphere may have left something to be desired–in a “you’d better have a family member or friend to bring you drinks and run off the med students from pulling at your drain tubes like curious monkeys” kind of way–but things looked clean. And I only saw one nurse (At MCV, now officially VCU Medical Center) ignore basic hygiene practices in patient care, in the Neurosciences ICU by coincidence. She didn’t expect patients to be conscious, and didn’t bother changing gloves between touching them–and just ignored me when I asked her to do so. But she was the exception. Being a large teaching hospital, they’re going to end up with more hospital-contracted infections, but both MCV and Wake Forest’s hospital seemed to be doing OK with basic procedures to prevent that.

Then, I have also spent time in a mid-sized VA hospital as a visitor when my stepdad was in there for months after a serious car crash. It was pretty bad, though they do seem to have improved since then. They ignored it when he got extremely jaundiced until my mother got after them, he got neglected bedsores, and my mother had to keep getting after them to change the bedlinens. Things looked grotty and run down there, too.

ETA: They also both work on similar inefficient models. You need to have blood drawn. They won’t do that in the doctor’s office. You have to go to the hospital. So, you go to Point A and pick up Form X, which you then take to Point B on the other side of the hospital to get Form Y, then back across the hospital complex to take a number and wait for 3 hours (no exaggeration, with my last bloodwork). You’d better hope you didn’t leave either form somewhere–or that the folks at Point B didn’t insist on taking Form A from you before they’d hand you Form B–because you’re going to need them both once your number comes up. If they’ve taken Form A, you’ll have to try to find someone who will reissue a copy of it (good luck!) because the person who took the original from you has already lost, eaten, or shredded it. If you have to start over, the phlebotomy techs are going to close up shop before your number comes up another 3 hours later. Oh yeah, and you’d better hope somebody’s with you to warn you your number is up in case you need to go to the bathroom after waiting 2.95 hours. And all that’s just for getting blood drawn. When things are running relatively smoothly. *headdesk*/ETA

Yes, I’m seeing a theme emerging here: poorly managed large government-run organizations. And, no, I am not suggesting that privatizing is is the way to go at all. But cutting more funding while continuing to run things inefficiently sure as hell isn’t going to give you decent results. It’s going to harm people.

Like this:

Related

i am a male just know. i have been trying to change my sex to female. just i was 18 years old. now i am 48 years old. getting no where here in scotland, my doctor is not interested to refed me to any sex clinic / hospital. so i will need your advice to what to do know?

That sounds like a horrible situation. 😦 I’m sorry you’ve been treated like that–there’s no excuse for it! It’s very frustrating the way people who are already having problems so often get put off and have to jump through extra hoops to try to get what they need.

I’m actually an American living in the UK, so haven’t had as much experience with dealing with the NHS or how to get anywhere with complaints. There is the Scottish Independent Advocacy Alliance which may be able to help. There is also The Trans Equality Project, which provides advice and legal help in cases of discrimination. (And it sounds like this qualifies!) I don’t know much about either one, but hopefully they’ll be able to help.